The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for providing playlists and bookmarks in interactive media guidance application systems.
Playlists are known and may be used to determine the order in which assets (e.g., television programs, songs, etc.) are played. As defined herein, an asset refers to any type of media that may be played. Such media may include all the variants of television media, music media, interactive games, and other audio and/or video media. Assets may be added to a playlist, deleted from a playlist, or rearranged in a playlist. Various user interfaces are provided to enable a user to make such modifications to playlists.
Playlists may include several assets of similar or different media types ranging, for example, from two to several hundreds or thousands of assets. Thus, when the playtime of each asset is totaled, a substantial amount of time may be required to playback the entire playlist. Since playlists may include several assets, a user may wish to be provided with information related to the playback of assets in a particular playlist. For example, a user may be interested in knowing how much time has elapsed during playback of a playlist or an asset, or how much time is remaining in the playlist or the asset. Known systems may be able to provide information as to how much time has elapsed and give an indication as to how much time remains for a given asset, but these systems are limited to providing such information for only that one given asset and are further unable to simultaneously provide information that gives a user a sense of position within a playlist. Moreover, some of these systems require a full screen display to display such information, thereby preventing a user from simultaneously viewing programming and information related to a playlist.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide systems and methods for providing information in a manner that enables a user to easily ascertain a playback position within a playlist and a particular asset.
It is also desirable to provide systems and methods for playlist and bookmark related features.
It is further desirable to provide systems and method for providing VOD program information screens that provide access to playlist and bookmark features.